" White Pine nominee, 2009

Spinetingler Magazine Award Nominee, 2009

Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice, 2009"

"A boy maybe twelve years old, on a bike, stopped next to Dooley, looked at the kid sprawled on the pavement and said, "Is he dead?"
 

"Yeah, I think so," Dooley said. In fact, he was sure of it because there was no air going into or coming out of the lungs of the kid on the pavement. Also, the kid's open eyes were staring at nothing, and his head was twisted, as if he had turned to look at something just before he made contact with the hard surface of the path."
 

Right away, Dooley knows he's in trouble. For one thing he's got a record. For another, the dead kid isn't exactly a stranger - and he's no friend.
 

So slowly the net begins to close around 17-year-old Dooley, a troubled lone wolf who has a couple of strikes against him already. Not many are on Dooley's side; in fact at times he even wonders whether his uncle - a retired cop - thinks he's guilty again. There's a big question of trust in their uneasy relationship, and his uncle is the only one standing between Dooley and big time disaster.
 

The dead kid's sister Beth is someone Dooley would like to have think better of him as well - but she also suspects he's involved in the crime. And all around him are other teenagers at school and in the world he's drawn into who would like to pin him with responsibility for a growing number of murders that swirl through the city.
 

Norah McClintock, five-time winner of the Arthur Ellis juvenile crime award, has now moved into a different realm with a richly detailed novel aimed at older teens. Gritty, hard-edged, " Dooley Takes the Fall "is the first in a trilogy of mysteries about a troubled teenager struggling to free himself from the tentacles of his past and the implications of the present conspiracies that surround him.
 

Even though Dooley has kept to a strict routine at home and work, checking in with his uncle regularly and staying out of trouble, when he is the witness to the suicide of classmate Mark Everley, he knows that he will come under suspicion because of his police record. His presence at Everley's death scene is enough for the police to consider him a convenient and acceptable scapegoat for the crime. His innocence is not helped by the fact that he did not admit to sharing a past with Everley right away. Dooley's willingness to help find out what happened to Everley, whom he disliked and avoided, is caused more by his interest in Everley's sister, although she soon comes to believe the rumors that he might have been behind her brother's demise. When Dooley is doped at a party he is not supposed to be attending, he loses any credibility he had with his uncle, the police, and the people around him. His only hope for the future is to discover what actually happened, no matter what the consequences. The five-time award-winner of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for the best Juvenile Crime Book presents a fast-paced book with an involving character and a story that builds to a satisfying climax. This title could be recommended for fans of Graham McNamee's Acceleration (Random House, 2003/VOYA December 2003) or Gail Giles's books. Reviewer: Betsy Fraser

Categories:

• Teen & Young Adult
  
  
  • Mysteries & Thrillers
    • Law & Crime